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Cream of Celery
2 heads of celery; 1 small onion; 1 quart of milk; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon flour or arrowroot; 1 teaspoon salt; 1/2 saltspoon white pepper. Remove the tender heart of the celery for serving alone, using the outside stalks for the soup. Cut these in pieces and put on to boil with the best of the leaves and the onion cut in quarters, in water enough to well cover. Boil slowly until soft; strain through a coarse sieve, add the milk, butter, and thickening; boil very slowly ten minutes; add salt and pepper, and serve.
A straightforward Victorian cream soup, thin by modern standards and reliant on the celery water rather than a stock. Two details need attention: the vague thickening instruction and the risk of scorching a quart of milk.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the white pepper here amounts to about an eighth of a teaspoon. It is meant to season without flecking the pale soup.
- Heads of celeryA "head" is what a supermarket sells as a whole bunch, roughly a pound. Two bunches gives you plenty of outer stalks for the pot and two hearts to serve raw alongside, which is the point of the first instruction.
- The thickeningThe recipe never says how to combine the tablespoon of flour with the butter. Rub them together into a paste and whisk it into the hot liquid, or cook them together in the pan first; adding dry flour to hot milk will give you lumps.
- If you use arrowrootArrowroot thins out if held at a boil, so stir it in as a cold-water slurry at the very end and heat only until the soup thickens. Flour is the more forgiving choice for a ten-minute simmer.
- Straining'Strain through a coarse sieve' most likely means pressing the softened celery and onion through rather than discarding it, since the pulp would otherwise be the body of the soup. A food mill or a stiff spatula against a mesh strainer does the work. Save some of the cooking water in case the result is too thick.
- Boil very slowlyOnce the milk is in, keep it at a bare tremble over low heat and stir often. Milk on a hard boil scorches on the pan bottom and the burnt taste carries through the whole pot.
- Celery leavesThe leaves carry more flavour than the stalks, so use the dark green ones from the outer bunch as directed. Since there is no stock here, they and the onion are the only aromatics.
- YieldAbout five to six cups, serving four as a first course. It is deliberately light; a cook wanting something richer can replace part of the milk with cream.